[Research and health care at the Fernandes Figueira Institute: an interview with José Augusto de Britto].

This material is the result of an interview with José Augusto Alves de Britto, a physician who served as director of the Fernandes Figueira Institute from 2001 to 2008. It covers different aspects of the history of the institution, such as research development, health care, and transformations in the daily routine there. It is part of a project to document and investigate the history of the Fernandes Figueira Institute, which celebrates its one hundredth anniversary in 2024.

[Management in tension: the Brazilian public health surveillance system and its response to the covid-19 pandemic].

This article addresses the Brazilian government's response to the covid-19 pandemic, particularly the public health surveillance and epidemic intelligence system. It traces the evolution of disease surveillance as a response to the International Health Regulations in the context of global health. Executive orders published in the official gazette, Diário Oficial da União, are analyzed, as well as the actors and groups formed to tackle the pandemic between January 2020 and March 2022.

Beyond biomedical classifications: breast cancer experience in Brazil, 1990-2015.

The paper analyses illness experiences of breast cancer in women undergoing treatment at the Hospital of Cancer III of the National Institute of Cancer. It argues that part of the interviewed women's experience was constructed from the interaction between family coexistence and the mobilisation of different cultural meanings of the disease and femininity, negotiating senses for biomedical entities. The study results from a qualitative research of ethnographic inspiration that interviewed women undergoing treatment from breast cancer during 2015.

From Embryotomy to Cesarean: Changes in Obstetric Operatory Techniques in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Urban Brazil.

This article traces the historical processes by which Brazil became a world leader in cesarean sections. It demonstrates that physicians changed their position toward and use of different obstetric surgeries, in particular embryotomies and cesarean sections, over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The authors demonstrate that Catholic obstetricians, building upon both advancements in cesarean section techniques and new civil legislation that gave some personhood to fetuses, began arguing that fetal life was on par with its maternal counterpart in the early twentieth century, a shift that had a lasting impact on obstetric practice for decades to come.

Fenton pre-oxidation of natural organic matter in drinking water treatment through the application of iron nails.

This study investigated for the first time the efficiency of an advanced oxidation process (AOP) zero valent iron/hydrogen peroxide (ZVI/HO) employing iron nails for the removal of Natural Organic Matter (NOM) from natural water of Regent's Park lake, London, UK. The low cost of nails and their easy separation from the water after the treatment make this AOP attractive for water utilities in low- and middle-income countries. The process was investigated as a pre-oxidation step for drinking water treatment.

New problems of a new health system: the creation of a national public policy of rare diseases care in Brazil (1990s-2010s).

This study discusses actors and institution movements leading to the disclosure in 2014 of Resolution 199 by the Brazilian Ministry of Health, which establishes the National Policy for the Comprehensive Care of Persons with Rare Diseases. Taking as sources the mainstream newspapers, drafts law, and secondary literature on the subject, we begin our analysis in the early 1990s when the first patient associations were created in Brazil - mainly for claiming more funds for research on genetic diseases - and arrive at the late 2010s when negotiations for a national policy are taking place in the National Congress. Resolution 199 is part of an ongoing process and the path towards its disclosure and the complications that followed have given us elements to discuss contemporary aspects of the Brazilian public health.

[Struggles for the history of health: perspectives on the social sciences in health based on the intellectual trajectory of Luiz Antonio de Castro Santos].

This interview discusses the connections between social sciences and health, based on the trajectory of sociologist Luiz Antonio de Castro Santos. Castro Santos was an active participant in the process of integrating these fields, and considers some of the challenges he faced as a way of addressing approaches that were not always devoid of tension. In a conversation rich in facts and processes, Castro Santos describes some of the most important characters and landmarks from a trajectory that contributed to the social sciences and history, and especially to the health sciences.

[A firsthand description of childbirth's pathways into Brazilian health policies: interview with Maria do Carmo Leal and Marcos Dias].

This interview discusses the pathways that brought childbirth into Brazilian public policies. Maria do Carmo Leal and Marcos Dias are active participants in this journey, in academics as well as activism. In the interview, the participants reflect on the challenges to achieving change in the Brazilian health care model and highlight the importance of women's participation and their movements in reaching this goal.

Methods of childbirth preparation: a study of printed matter published in Brazil in the mid-twentieth century.

The article explores the dissemination of natural childbirth practices through an analysis of the books Parto natural: guia para os futuros pais, written by U.S. obstetrician Frederick Goodrich Jr.

Synthetic oxytocin and hastening labor: reflections on the synthesis and early use of oxytocin in Brazilian obstetrics.

This article reflects on the medicalization of childbirth, focusing on the development of synthetic oxytocin in 1953. Specifically addressed is the social life of oxytocin; in other words, its synthesis, stabilization, and use in obstetrics to hasten labor. Two Brazilian obstetrics journals of this era were surveyed to analyze the early use of synthetic oxytocin in Brazil in the late 1950s, along with obstetric arguments for or against its use.

The opportunity pill: discourses about the birth control pill in A Gazeta da Farmácia, 1960-1981.

The pharmacy world was a mandatory crossing point and active player in the establishment of hormonal contraception in Brazil. Through an analysis of articles published in A Gazeta da Farmácia from 1960 to 1981, the study explores little-known aspects of the birth control pill's biography and the construction of its Brazilian market. For pharmacy professionals, oral contraceptives were "opportunity pills" in two senses: they provided profits and they restored the prestige of these professionals within the scientific, clinical-therapeutic, and political realms.

Cancer in Ceará: shaping a medical and social problem, 1940-1954.

This article addresses the shaping of cancer as a relevant medical and social problem in the Brazilian state of Ceará from 1940 to 1954. While this disease initially garnered little importance on the local medical and health agenda, and was considered a problem for philanthropy, a group of physicians and allies brought cancer to the public health agenda and led to the Campaign Against Cancer in 1954. This group's ability to unite internal and external allies with a broader reach portrayed cancer as a relevant medical and social problem in Ceará.

Absorption and metabolization of sex hormones and their transformation into contraceptive technologies: the paths taken by medical thought in Brazil.

The article analyses knowledge assimilation and the development of clinical and research practices relating to sex hormones among Brazilian gynaecologists. It discusses the paths taken by medical thought from the reception of the hormones to their transformation into contraceptives. Our objective is to comprehend styles of introducing and disseminating medical technologies in the area of reproductive health in Brazil.

The brief life of Norplant® in Brazil: controversies and reassemblages between science, society and State.

Norplant® is the brand name of the world's first registered subdermal hormonal contraceptive implant, developed by the laboratories of the Population Council, an international organisation working in the area of fertility and population growth. The article revisits the trajectory of this contraceptive in Brazil from its arrival through clinical trials to its eventual ban in 1986 by the Brazilian regulatory agency responsible for approving medications at the time. Its circulation generated controversies related to research practices, side effects and political uses of the drug as a birth control method.

Cesarean sections, perfecting the technique and standardizing the practice: an analysis of the book Obstetrícia, by Jorge de Rezende.

This article discusses the development of techniques for cesarean sections by doctors in Brazil, during the 20th century, by analyzing the title "Operação Cesárea" (Cesarean Section), of three editions of the textbookObstetrícia, by Jorge de Rezende. His prominence as an author in obstetrics and his particular style of working, created the groundwork for the normalization of the practice of cesarean sections. The networks of meaning practiced within this scientific community included a "provision for feeling and for action" (Fleck) which established the C-section as a "normal" delivery: showing standards that exclude unpredictability, chaos, and dangers associated with the physiology of childbirth, meeting the demand for control, discipline and safety, qualities associated with practices, techniques and technologies of biomedicine.

Rodolfo dos Santos Mascarenhas: a pioneer of health history.

Studies on the work of Mascarenhas analyze his contribution to the history of health in Sao Paulo and the aspects of his work which place him in what is entitled the second generation of health workers of São Paulo state - being the first generation the one led by Emílio Ribas. This article recaptures these points and highlights his last works on preventive and community medicine. We argue that the conception of public health consolidated during his education was essential for his interest in the new model of medicine that was starting to spread in the country.

From gynaecology offices to screening campaigns: a brief history of cervical cancer prevention in Brazil.

This paper discusses the knowledge and medical practices relating to cervical cancer in Brazil. It analyses the growing medical interest in the disease at the beginning of the twentieth century, the development of prevention techniques in the 1940s, and the emergence of screening programs in the 1960s. It argues that the development of knowledge on cervical cancer was related simultaneously to a number of factors: transformations in medical knowledge, the development of the idea that the disease should be treated as a public health problem, the increased concerns with women's health, and major changes to the Brazilian healthcare system.

Study of solar photo-Fenton system applied to removal of phenol from water.

This study evaluated the use of a Fenton's reaction in a falling film solar reactor (FFR), as a possible advanced oxidation process for the mineralization of the organic compound phenol in water. Preliminary tests were carried out to evaluate phenol degradation by photolysis and to select the optimal residence time in which to carry out the process using a solar photo-Fenton system. The variables studied were the initial phenol concentration (100 to 300 mg L(-1)), the [Phenol]:[H2O2] mass ratio (1.

[Technology and disciplinary fields: cytotechnicians and implementation of the Pap test in Brazil].

The implementation of the Pap test as a primary technology in the control of cervical cancer in Brazil was the result of choices, agreements and disputes among certain professional groups, including physicians from various specialisations, pharmacists, biologists, biomedical scientists and cytotechnologists. The first part of the paper describes the process of formulating Brazil's first screening campaigns using the Pap smear, and the subsequent emergence of the profession of cytotechnology, whose practitioners interpret this test. Second, based on questions raised by international historiography in the field of science and technology, we explore in detail how the adoption of the Pap smear transpired within the Brazilian context, focussing on the debates among the various professional groups with an interest in the suitability of the test and on the relationships between the public and private healthcare sectors.

[Considerations on the Sistema Único de Saúde in the twenty-first century: an interview with Lígia Bahia].

This interview with Lígia Bahia explores evaluations of the first 25 years of Brazil's Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) and analyzes the project's progress, impasses, and missteps. Bahia is critical of both tendencies currently found within SUS: the one that sees the system as aimed at equity and the other posing equality as its goal. She criticizes the ambivalence that various spheres of government have displayed in their decisions regarding large corporate groups and private health insurance plans, which conflict with the ideas of SUS.

[Health reform and the creation of the Sistema Único de Saúde: notes on contexts and authors].

Within the context of the return to democracy, the new constitution enacted in 1988 transformed health into an individual right and initiated the process of creating a public, universal and decentralized health system, profoundly altering the organization of public health in Brazil. This article discusses the main institutional, political and social aspects of this health reform, along with the changes, the continuities and the major initiatives, based on the literature published by the most widely read authors in this field of study. Without purporting to offer an exhaustive analysis, we discuss how the historiography written by authors who were also actors in the process assess its main features, along with the genesis of the process and the legacy of health reform in Brazil.